Introduction
Sigmund Freud was probably amongst the most influential scholars in the area of psychology because his psychodynamic approach to personality gave rise to other psychological perspectives, normally developed from the criticism of Freud or supplementation of his legacy. The present paper is intended to explore Freud’s main works.
Main body
Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856, to the Jewish Moravian family of Jacob and Amalie Freud, in which the wife was more than twenty years younger than her husband. The family treated young Sigmund as a gifted child and thus sacrificed everything to give him a good education. As Freud was a doctoral student of medicine, he first focused on researching cerebral palsy and the origins of fishes, particularly eel, to which his dissertation thesis was dedicated. However, evaluating critically his contribution to biology, Freud realized that he had had little success and thus went to Paris to work with renowned neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. His first method of treating neuroses and hysteria was hypnosis, which was proven ineffective and replaced with listening to the client’s problems (Hall, 1954). At that time, Freud and his colleagues from Vienna University undertake a series of studies (mainly on themselves and their first clients) associated with dream and child memories analysis.
His research further resulted in the development of the psychodynamic theory of personality, described in “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”. The basics of Freudian theory can be found in human physiology, as the scholar interpreted the meaning of such needs as hunger, thirst, avoidance of pain, and sex as the components of human survival instinct that forces humanity to reproduce. One more human drive is the need for entropy, i.e. the desire for dying – as we know from elementary physics, each object prefers static state to dynamic. Following those two principles, Freud built his personality theory: human nature, in his opinion, consists of three elements: Id, Ego, and Superego. It is a subconscious element, and its main principle is a pleasure principle, so it is responsible for the immediate satisfaction of human needs. The ego reflects the self-esteem and the ‘self vision of the individual and it is responsible for problem-solving activities (Freud, 1975). Super-ego shapes under the influence of the surroundings, and it is responsible for socialization and social behavior. Freud overstates the animalistic nature of the f human-being and the importance of the subconscious and states thathuman behavior that humans explained from the position of id, because it constitutes the main part of human personality. Freud explains human behavior as the development of animal instincts, such as survival instinct. On the other hand, there is another human psychological drive – Tanatos, i.e. the wish to die. One more important characteristic of Freud’s theory is that he researches not a healthy personality, but a personality with disoders and states disorders people are initially ‘entangled’ by Oedipus’ and Electra’s complexes that determine an individual’s behavior in adulthood (Freud, 1975). From this perspective, virtually every individual is neurotic due to the incomplete realization of the two complexes, associated with early sexual attraction to the parent of the opposite gender.
Freud made also interesting insights into personality’s position within society. His “Civilization and Its Discontents” draws quite a clear picture of all behaviors and beliefs individuals are supposed to restrict for themselves under the pressure of civilization. In particular, social norms prescribe that human instinctual aggression be minimized, as opposed to primitive societies, where the head of the family freely manifested aggression and violence against others, especially authoritative figures, sexual competitors, and those who were first to cause harm to the individual’s family or property. Because inexplicable aggressive behaviors fail to fit the framework of the common well-being, individuals are expected to inhibit the corresponding drives (Freud, 1989). Furthermore, civilization imposes heterosexual marriage and intrafamilial fidelity, thus linking the individual to a single partner, whereas the evidence suggests that under the primordial order, there existed rich traditions of polygamy and extra-genital satisfaction practices. The use of this requirement consists in the creation of “sexual uniformity”: “The requirement demonstrated in these prohibitions, that there shall be a single kind of sexual life for everyone, disregards the dissimilarities […]” (Freud, 1989, p.72). Similar to the Eros drive, the destructive side of human instincts is also to be suppressed; in particular, suicide is viewed as the violation of the commonly approved direction to the society’s survival, so human life is no longer “disposable” under the reign of civilization. Religion, according to Freud, is intended to fulfill an individual’s guilt for the murder of the “Primal Father”, reflected, for instance, in the Greek creation tale, which includes a passage about Uranus’s son’s rebellion against him, as well as in the myth about Oedipus. The image of this First Father is embedded into human personality and turns into the Super-Ego, the inner censor, whose role is filtering intentions and preventing undesirable behaviors. Religion serves as one of society’s strongest tools of subjugating human being, who is antisocial, considering the abovementioned necessity of individual renunciation in such important dimensions of life. Freud’s evidence, as one can assume, derives from both observations of primitive societies and exegeses of myths and other allegorical narratives. His perspective is also greatly associated with contemporary events like WWI, the Industrial Revolution, domination of imperialism and conservatism, and the growing dependence of individuals upon urban civilization.
His views on religion are broadened in the book entitled “The Future of an Illusion”. As Carver and Scheier write, “In Future of an Illusion Freud still regards religion as a compulsive neurosis; something which we can outgrow. Subsequently, his position is sharply critical towards religion, yet optimistic about the possibility to overcome it. Religion is the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity; like the obsessional neurosis of children, it arose out of the Oedipus complex, out of the relation to the father” (Carver and Scheier, 1995, p. 131). As for Christianity, Freud characterizes the faith in God as a human defense mechanism, known as rationalization –for instance, the notion that Christ died to help humanity be released from the punishment for their sins refers to the justification of the initial murder. Thus the influence of civilization is described by Freud as traumatic, since it fetters personality and doesn’t allow individual consciousness to develop fully, because of the Super Ego’s “censorship. Nowadays, citizens of Western societies have reached the stage of consciousness, which Freud describes as ideal since they are both able and allowed to make decisions on their own, through their critical reasoning, in which they are entitled to distract from societal mores.
It needs to be noted that Freud has several disciples, who created their psychological approaches. Among them, it is necessary to distinguish Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Victor Frankl, Otto Rank, and Anna Freud. Although Freud’s works were banned in Germany with the advent of Nazism, by the 1930s, the scholar gained great popularity, not limited by the boundaries of the single country.
In his writings, Freud overstates the importance of early childhood, since he states that almost all psychological problems derive from childhood troubles. In addition, Freud also overemphasizes the role of the Id in human life and proves that the id is the main determinant of human behavior. However, when viewing his doctrine constructively, one can assume that his concept of the subconscious and Super-Ego encourages individuals to review the true motives of their actions and intensify their self-control so that their actions become more independent.
Reference list
- Hall, C. (1954). A Primer in Freudian Psychology. Meridian Books.
- Freud, S. (1975). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. New York: Basic Books.
- Carver, C. and Scheier, S. (1995). Perspectives on Personality, 3rd edition. Massachusetts, Allyn and Bacon.
- Freud, S. (1989). Civilization and Its Discontents. W.W. Norton Company.